The iPhone has always been seen as a consumers handset. But now comes word 40 percent of iPhones are purchased by business. “Four out of 10 sales of the iPhone are made to enterprise users,” Ron Spears, head of AT&T’s Business Solutions, told a Thursday conference.

When the iPhone first appeared in 2007, business users were disappointed because it didn’t match the security of a BlackBerry. The word on the street, according to Spears: “‘Oh my God, it’s not BlackBerry secure. This is not going to work on the enterprise space.'”However, within a year, when the iPhone 3G was introduced in 2008, Apple solved 80 percent of security issues, the AT&T executive said. Businesses now “view the iPhone as a mobile computer,” he added.

That progress has shown in a number of surveys indicating inroads into the corporate cubicle. The iPhone had 27 percent of the corporate smartphone market, up five percent from a year ago, according to Changewave Research. The major reason for the increase: better security.

Another survey, by JD Powers, seemed to put to rest the opinion the iPhone isn’t on par with the BlackBerry. The Apple handset scored 803 out of 1,000 points – 79 points higher than the BlackBerry, according to the research firm’s Smartphone Satisfaction Study conducted in the fall of 2009.

About the author

Ed Sutherland is a veteran technology journalist who first heard of Apple when they grew on trees, Yahoo was run out of a Stanford dorm and Google was an unknown upstart. Since then, Sutherland has covered the whole technology landscape, concentrating on tracking the trends and figuring out the finances of large (and small) technology companies.

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